Fruit and vegetable slicers of the hand-held and manually operated variety provide an efficient means of quickly cutting fruits and vegetables into slices for immediate consumption or use in cooking. Such slicers typically comprise a pivotable slide plate across which the food article is passed reciprocally while striking a transverse cutting blade for cutting the article into slices.
While most such slicing devices are effective in carrying out their primary purpose, namely providing a means for rapidly slicing food articles with a minimum of effort, they also commonly suffer from similar shortcomings and limitations. For example, a common shortcoming is that the cutting blade, which is not removable, ultimately becomes dull and/or rusted resulting in the entire apparatus going unused or being discarded. Replacing the apparatus with a new one with any frequency becomes cost prohibitive often resulting in the user performing the task manually with a kitchen knife. This, of course, is undesirable because the task is time and labor intensive.
Another problem associated with slicers of the prior art is that the pivotable slide plate on which the article to be cut is guided sags when pressure is exerted on the article during the sliding process. This often results in the creation of slices that are not uniform in thickness, and in some instances, results in breakage of the apparatus because the height adjustable slide plate is not properly supported.
Accordingly, there is a need for a slicing apparatus for fruits and vegetables wherein the cutting blade is easily replaceable and the height-adjustable slide plate is adequately supported.